Hytale

The Hytale project was created soon after Mojang announced a new EULA for Minecraft in 2014 restricting the monetization of community servers, which impacted popular server Hypixel. While the server itself survived the monetization change, the team behind Hypixel - with some hesitation - started the project of a new voxel-based game that would eventually be revealed as Hytale.

From the announcement footage, Hytale appears to have had a heavy Minecraft influence, giving players a voxel-based sandbox environment with a fantasy theme. The game was seen to be played in both first-person and over-the-shoulder perspective engaging in activities such as farming, mining, building, blacksmithing, foot combat, mounted combat and scuba diving. The trailer promised to deliver modding tools to create custom experiences, a visually-customizable player character, in-game video streaming to multiple players to create watch parties and cinematic (camera control) tool. Press interviews also revealed that the game environments would also be procedurally generated much like Minecraft's.

At the same time the trailer was published, Riot Games, Inc. announced that it would lead an investment into the Hytale project, revealing that the Hytale team had initially met with Riot president Dylan Jadeja in 2016. Alongside Riot's investment were: Peter Levin, Dennis Fong, Rob Pardo, Anthony Borquez, Jeff Lo and Min Kim.

On 23 June 2025, Hypixel Studios co-founder Aaron "Noxy" Donaghey announced on the official Hytale blog the cancellation of the Hytale project citing overly-ambitious scope, but assured the continuation of the Minecraft Hypixel server.

On 17 November 2025, Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme announced that the rights to the game were transferred to them from Riot Games, and that the game would release in early access on 13 January 2026.